Tuesday, July 06, 2004

Using a 'Ben Franklin' to Decide



Switching Careers : Career Changers Tell How and Why They Did It : Learn How You Can TooI saw a post on the JOS forum regarding changing jobs after a short period of time. Would a potential 20 to 30% salary increase make it worth jumping ship after only seven months?

You may want to take a more quantitative approach. My Dad taught me long ago how to make a "Ben Franklin" when faced with a critical decision like this one.

A "Ben" is nothing more than a matrix of criteria. Each item is assigned a value from 1-10. And each item is assigned a "weight" or level of importance. You choose the weight... it, too, should be between 1 and 10. Once you've assigned values and weights, multiply the each item by the weight. Then total up the final values.

Here's an example:



--- Factor (1-10) --- X Y Wght X Y
Salary + benefits 8 10 8 64 80
Stock + other 2 10 7 14 70
Enjoyment of job 9 10 9 81 90
Long-term stability 10 3 10 100 30
Loyalty factor 10 1 10 100 10
Commute 10 3 6 60 18
Travel requirements 6 9 7 42 63
Prestige 6 10 7 42 70
Networking ability 3 10 6 18 60
Stuck in one role 3 10 4 12 40
Hours 10 5 9 90 45
----------------------------------------------------
Weighted Totals 623 578
----------------------------------------------------


You can see, in this case, that the highest paying job didn't total out the highest.

In fact, my Dad also said: throw away all but the top five weighted items and add THOSE up. Because those are your true key metrics.

1 comment:

~SugarBear~ said...

I've never seen that formula before, however, I copied it down (hope you don't mind) for future use. I'm job hunting right now and this could prove to be a very important tool in deciding between two or more offers (should that occur). Glad you posted it, thanks!